gwen: what started as an internal upheaval in ukraine is now a superpower standoff. plus a taste of politics 2016 style. tonight on "washington week." >> in 2014 we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders. gwen: the standoff between crimea and kiev, between europe and russia, between barack obama and vladimir putin. grows more tense. >> i don't mean to sound in any way pollyannaish about this moment in history. this is a moment that could turn south in a hurry and could escalate in a hurry. gwen: russia denies bad intent but threats on all sides are only escalating. >> the united states will not grant visas to those who

threaten the sovereignty or territorial integrity of ukraine. >> mr. putin, tear down this wall. the wall of intimidation, the wall of military aggression, and let's build up new type of relations. between ukraine and russia. gwen: we examine the history and the future of the confrontation. plus the future of the grand old party. on display. >> it's time for a little rebellion on the battlefield of ideas. >> i think the left is exhausted. our side is energized. and on election day, we're going to win. >> we don't get to govern if we don't win. gwen: as republicans take stock. covering the week, peter baker of "the new york times." doyle mcmanus of the "los angeles times." nd gloria borger of cnn.

>> award winning reporting and analysis. covering history as it happens. live from our nation's capital, this is "washington week with gwen ifill." corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> we went out and asked people a simple question. how old is the oldest person you've known? we gave people a sticker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who's lived well into their 90's and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed, the official retirement age. the question is, how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years? >> whether it's discovering an aspirin a day can prevent heart attacks worldwide, or creating cells that regenerate new heart muscle, our goal is developing treatments that save lives. brigham and women's hospital.

>> additional corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by the boeing. additional funding is provided by the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to pbs stations from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. the situation in ukraine shows every sign of slipping out of anyone's control. and as always with sudden upheaval, there are more questions than answers. will diplomacy work? secretary of state john kerry spent the week working that front. >> russia can now choose to de-escalate this situation. and we are committed to working with russia and together with our friends and allies, in an effort to provide a way for this entire situation to find

the road to de-escalation. gwen: another question -- is military action a possibility? joint chiefs chairman martin dempsey spoke to my "newshour" colleague judy woodruff today. >> i do have this open line with my russian counterpart so everything that we've done, i tell him, here's what we're doing. here's why we're doing it. we disagree fundamentally about your claim of legitimacy. but as militaries, let's try to avoid escalating this thing. >> but there is a chance it could escalate. >> of course there is. >> a chance of military conflict. >> yeah. gwen: but at the center of all this is the puzzle that's russian president vladimir putin. is the grand plan afoot here that we know of here, peter? >> it seems to be very improvisational. president obama trying to give what he calls an off ramp to president putin of russia, a way to de-escalate, to stand down from this crisis. gwen: pull back from the brink. those three phrases. >> but president putin seems to be hitting the accelerator and not hitting the off ramp and is heading down the highway and going faster each day.

with each moment we think he's possibly pausing as he did at one point this week, then the next day they take the next step. right now, looking at an ex-ation of crimea, southern peninsula of ukraine. a red line for the united states but the problem for president obama is what do you do about it? i think that he's struggling to find the right mix of diplomacy, action, tough words, but not so tough that it can't find a way to come to a peaceful resolution. gwen: we always turn these things into personality conflicts. and i wonder how much of this is really a conflict between these two presidents. and how much of it is rooted in something more fundamental and therefore more difficult to solve? >> on one level, it is easy to see it as a personality conflict. for one thing, these guys have spent a lot of time talking to each other. they both believe in the power of personal diplomacy. gwen: spent an hour with him on the phone last night. >> and then more than an hour, a couple of nights before that. well, that's partly because each of these guys thinks he

has the capacity to somehow persuade the other. but each one -- gwen: how is that working out? >> not so hot. because each one is in a sense -- american officials and german officials have been saying that putin talks as if he's in a different reality. they don't mean he's nuts. they mean he's looking at a different framework. and that's what's making this harder and that's why it's not a personality problem. you know, ukraine was part of russia for 300 years. putin doesn't have a grand plan here but he had grand ambitions to bring ukraine back into what he called his ue racial union and one -- eurasian union and one thing we forgot, when that evolt rose in ukraine, and yanukovych was pushed out, that was an enormous defeat for putin. who had spent a lot of time wooing yanukovych and ukraine in his direction. so he -- this isn't just ukraine. this isn't just putin grabbing for victory. this is putin staving off what would have been a defeat.

>> but have we already seen the end game here? i mean, whether it's annexation or whether it remains ambiguous, putin keeps his port in crimea. keeps control one way or another. i mean, isn't -- it is what it is? >> it's hard to see how the united states and -- can roll back the russian presence in crimea. they have very few measures that would do that. that they seem willing to take anyway. and it's hard to change the status quo on the ground. putin owns the province. he has several thousand ukrainians and 30,000 troops there, probably not that many. and they could possibly stop him from going further. that's been the first priority this week. we're not thrilled with what's happening in crimea but he could take all of eastern ukraine. and not split it down the middle and that for the moment has been headed off. gwen: the one solution the administration has been floating is the idea of sending in monitors, international monitors. i asked -- u.n. ambassador samantha power about this last night.

exactly what the end game would look like. this is what she said. >> how do you see this ending? >> well, all i can -- i can say is what needs to happen in order for this to end. russia needs to make clear to the world and to the people of ukraine that it is prepared to work with the international community, with monitors, who are independent and credible, in order to pursue its legitimate interests both in crimea and in ukraine proper. gwen: let's talk about how that's worked so far. there was a u.n. special envoy who went into crimea and basically was driven out before he was even able to start his mission. so even though they're talking about things like this, they don't seem terribly optimistic. >> and also there's a group called the organization for security and cooperation in europe. that has sent a mission to ukraine twice to try and get them on the ground. unarmed western military officers. to do the monitoring and the idea there is ok, russia, if your concern is the safety of russians speaking nationals or

russian citizens in eastern ukraine, we'll try and protect that for you. but that group has been blocked not once but twice. so it really looks like at this point russia is not interested in that particular offering. >> so what about the sanctions that we sort of slapped on this week which seemed very basic? >> modest. >> against the unnamed or named now bad boys. who have had a part in this. but we've kind of limited it to a great degree. >> i think what you're seeing is an effort by john kerry and in particular to say, let's go slow on how we do this. so we have a, some room to ratchet it up as events warrant and b, we give some breathing room to russia to back down without looking like they're doing it under pressure. but they have taken a number of actions. they suspended trade talks and basically said we will not go to the g-8 unless things change. gwen: isn't there something called the magnet's key act? where they could invoke -- >> yeah. that's for human rights

violations and could say, because of your violations of human rights you individual russian officials cannot come to the united states and freeze your assets. they're not willing to take the freeze assets part but the sanctions were visa ban for a dozen russian and ukrainian figures. they may not even know they're on this list but not told they don't have a visa, they're not told and find out if they have replied. so relatively minor in that sense. but the problem for president obama aside from his own desire to take it in a measured way is that europe isn't all that -- and that's a real conundrum. he doesn't want to be separated from the allies at this point. gwen: and the reason for europe is -- the immediate price for any sanctions. >> that's right. europe has a whole set of business dealings that are much larger and much more intimate than ours. financial. natural gas. something like a third of europe's natural gas or more comes through ukraine. so if -- from russia. if russia cuts that off. o in a sense, the -- what some

officials and some in congress have said, the silver bullet here mythically might be -- would be if you can threaten the oligarches, the money men around putin with freezing their assets in banks, in switzerland, freezing their real estate in london, then you'd really have them where you want them but the europeans hate that idea of economic -- >> can you penalize the banks who do business? gwen: yeah. >> we did that with iran, for example. >> and that is one of the nuclear options here. because what you say is ok, these state-run banks in russia were involved in let's just say providing arms to syria. we have sanctions against providing arms to syria. we haven't taken them against russia because we want to -- cooperation from russia in solving this civil war. we could tomorrow say these banks have been involved. but that means not just our banks can't do business with them. but really the europeans can't do business with them and deutsche bank has a lot more business with russian banks than we do. and that again, angela merkel would take that in a different

way than we look at it. >> zpwhr i'm curious about is whether this signals -- we always look for big picture descriptions of what this means. cold war comes to mind. you lived in moscow. you covered this for years. give us a sense of whether we are on the -- another cold war type standoff. >> it sure sounds like it and feels like it. the rhetoric has ratcheted up. the state department put out a statement rebutting a lot of russian claims. that was just scathing. it said in one case that this is the most imaginative russian fiction since -- not what you do to a country that you're seeing as a great partner right now. but if you want to look on the bright side, this -- look, the u.s.-russian relationship has been falling apart for some time. the russians haven't been helpful on syria for six months or more. the reset is really no more than a sad memory right now. but people in the administration will say on chemical weapons in syria, the

russians are still cooperating. on iran, there's no sign that the russians are bolting. and in putin's last statement, which was very tough, a very tough summary of his last conversation with president obama, there was this funny little note at the end saying, but i hope this doesn't mess up our bilateral relationship. >> what about snowden, though? >> edward snowden. >> edward snowden. >> sitting there in moscow. president obama canceled his meeting with putin last fall. even before this was happening. and the first time in half a century that an american president had done that. you're right. already been really rocky time. gwen: everybody at this table remembers when president bush, the last president bush, met with president putin in slovenia. slovakia. where were they? >> slovenia. gwen: and came away and he said i looked into his soul, and -- that he had him to the ranch and i would have had him to the ranch if i didn't trust him. so who has miscalculated? a series of u.s. presidents or

just this president -- >> the last three. and really four. the triumph of hope over actual experience. and each president comes in and says, i want to create a new dynamic in this relationship. i want to put the past in the past. and president clinton did it with president yeltsin. president bush did it with president putin. president obama did it with medvedev who was in the presidency while putin put himself in the prime minister -- >> took a break. >> and each one has miscalculated in thinking they had a greater chance of success than they did. and it's a cycle. we see the same cycle again and again. and it hasn't been completely self-delusion. peter spent more time in moscow and knows this better but the russians have been divided between modernizers and oligarchs. and medvedev was the modernizer. and that was always the hope that if you could build up the medvedevs of russia, the ones who wanted to build a silicon valley and wanted to join the international economy, not so much the international community per se, then you would actually have a process going. but medvedev hasn't been a key

figure. >> and miscalculation was thinking he was the future rather than a front man in effect for putin. >> remember the president's famous whisper to him. which is to tell putin i'll have -- john mccain is talking about nonstop i might add, which is saying remember pell putin i'll have more flexibility after the election. gwen: taken more as weakness than flexibility. >> that's what mccain was saying. what the president is saying we can push the reset button here and -- of course, current events intervene. look at syria. >> but lost in all of this it seems to me also is the reason why yanukovych was overthrown in the first place. and it was corruption. it wasn't because of putin and obama. it was about unhappiness about the way the country was being run and that has not changed, has it? >> no, not at all. the problem for ukraine is genuinely divided country. is divided along ethnic lines, divided along language lines. and it's divided along these

corruption lines. you put at the haves and the have nots. and the new government will come in and there's no reason to think -- and that they will have any more success than the pro-western government that came in after the orange revolution of 2004 unless something changes. and so as the americans and as the europeans are putting together an aid package, they're trying to say let's not do the same things we did last time. let's actually do real reform this time and make a different base for progress. >> but putin is aware of all of that. and all he's worried about is crimea right now. >> yeah. >> he's got what he wants. >> that's a very long process. what peter just described isn't something that happens in the next week, before there's a referendum in crimea, and wants to secede, that will take years. gwen: well, thanks. if you're one of those who think it's too soon to be talking 2016, like me, but i've given up. then you weren't paying attention to the doings just outside washington at the annual conservative political action conference this week. forget about the democrats and hillary. this was all about republicans

competing to reclaim the white house. here's a taste. >> the way the left tells it, the republican party is in this big massive civil war. it's tee party vs. establishment. libertarians vs. social conservatives. there's infighting. conflict. backbiting. discord. look, i'm irish. that's my idea of a family reunion. >> as our voices rise in protest, the n.s.a. monitors your every phone call. if you have a cell phone, you are under surveillance. i believe what you do on your cell phone is none of their damn business. >> it is time for washington to focus on the few things the constitution establishes as the federal government's role. defend our country. provide a cogent foreign policy. and what the heck? deliver the mail. preferably on time and on

saturday. gwen: and there were others, too. chris christie and ted cruz among them. sounds like the elephant is back and roaring again, gloria. >> back roaring, stepping all over each other. i might add, this was an audition for 2016. and it was kind of a raucous one. and you heard all of the dissident voices in the party. and as much as paul ryan says this is just a great thing, there are some really deep-seated differences that are going to get played out over the next few years. and obviously this -- this convention of conservatives is one of them. and you heard rand paul there talking about privacy. an issue upon which republicans disagree and what you do about surveillance and what you do about drones is another issue on which they disagree. ted cruz -- gwen: but chris christie said we should talk about what we're for not what we're against. it doesn't sound like that's happening yet. >> and by the way, christie was for everything that people in that room were for. he checked off every box that

he could possibly check off. ranging -- from being anti-abortion to taking on obamacare and the president. so look, i think -- i think they're all now in this phase where the only thing they agree on is that they don't like president obama. and they're at a point where they're trying to see who's more conservative, who can appeal to the base, and by the way, who might be able to win an election? >> christie haunted by this bridge controversy. but this is actually a controversial audience for him even before that, right? this is not his natural -- >> and he wasn't -- this year, he was actually believe it or not even given the controversy in a much better position with conservatives. because they believe he's been taken on by the media. he was railing against the media. and then got a standing ovation. at this conference. they don't really much like him. only three out of 10

republicans actually say they would consider voting for him. they're very suspect about him. they believe -- they remember the hug that he gave the president after hurricane sandy. so they're very suspect of him. but he came there as kind of a little bit of a hero who took on the press, and is being unfairly maligned. so they were very receptive to him. at least in this audience. i still do not believe he's the favorite of the people in that room. >> let me ask, is there a favorite of the people in that room? go ahead. >> you have to -- there isn't. but rand paul got a great, great reception there. gwen: he won the straw poll such as it is. >> such as it is which tells you nothing. but yes. he got -- he got a great reception. cruz got a warm reception. huckabee. so you can see where this -- where this gathering is. but it doesn't really tell you much of anything. other than they have the ability to give a great speech and throw the red meat out to

the base. gwen: let's go to 2014. a little closer. mitch mcconnell, the senate minority leader, walks out on stage with a big rifle, a firearm, a weapon. and waves it over his hand charlton heston style. what was that? >> mitch mcconnell is in a very tough political fight back home. now, what's helping him is that rand paul is for him. very popular in the home state of kentucky. very important tea partier. so he's got him on his side. that's good. but he does -- it's really going to face a very tough fight and he needs to shore up the base of the republican party. get them out there. second amendment. very important to the republican base. and so mitch mcconnell is doing what he has to do. but he's not running for president. but he just wants to get re-elected and be the leader of the republican senate which he wants to take over. >> a guy who might be running

for president, marco rubio, we didn't mechanics him, what did he do? >> marco rubio is an interesting fellow and a lot of criticism for immigration reform and looking for a path to citizenship. what he's trying to do right now is distinguish himself as the person the republican party who's kind of mccain light. more muscular. interventionist foreign policy. gwen: and as long as that's going on, they're going to look divided whether in fact they actually are between now and election day. >> yep. gwen: fun to watch. thank you, everybody. we have to leave you a few minutes early tonight. but to give you the chance to support your local pbs station. which in turn supports us. but our kfings continues online. -- conversation continues online. on the "washington week" webcast extra where we'll talk more ukraine and more politics. that streams live at 8:30 p.m. eastern time and all week long at pbs.org/washingtonweek. keep up with daily developments over on the pbs "newshour" and we'll see you next week on "washington week." don't forget to turn those

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steves: the best look at ancient constantinople is at church-turned-mosque that's been considered among the greatest houses of worship in both the christian and muslim worlds -- hagia sophia, the great church of constantinople. built by the byzantine emperor justinian in the early 6th century on the grandest scale possible, it was later converted into a mosque by the conquering ottomans. today it's a museum. hagia sophia, which marks the high point of byzantine architecture, is the pinnacle of that society's 6th-century glory days. this church was completed in 537, just about when europe was entering its dark ages.

for four centuries after that, christians in europe looked to constantinople as the leading city in christendom, and this was its leading church. this clever dome-upon-dome construction was the biggest dome anywhere, until the cathedral of florence was finished during the renaissance 900 years later. the vast interior gives the impression of a golden weightless shell, gracefully disguising the massive overhead load supported by masterful byzantine engineering. 40 arched windows shed a soft light on the interior, showing off the church's original marble and glittering mosaics. but the byzantine empire collapsed in the 15th century, and hagia sophia was turned into a mosque. christian mosaics were plastered over, and new religious symbols replaced the old. this church was built to face jerusalem.

mosques face mecca. when hagia sophia became a mosque, they couldn't move the church, but they could move the focal point of the praying. notice how the prayer niche is just a little bit off-center. that's because it faces mecca.

next on "kqed newsroom," as democrats gather for their state convention in los angeles, what's ahead for the party? the debate surrounding oakland surveillance center exposes heated concerns over privacy. plus, going with the flow. water recycling as the next frontier in the battle against detro drought. >> recycled water is going to be very important to silicon valley in the future. ♪